Tag Archives: build muscle

The introduction and more frequent use of ‘back off sets’ has become quite popular of late.

You’ll find you can use them to determine suitable loading for your next session, increase total TUT and even help you maintain your progress if you find your gym training time has been chopped down due to life getting in the way.

In the past this has happened several times and as such a way and to be found to get in some quality work, here is an option for you, it will take anywhere from 20-30min tops, try not to spend longer than 30min (especially if your time is limited), just focus on hard work.

All you need to do is follow the guidelines and put in all your effort, eat the calories required for your goal (I’ve written about this previously), sleep and stay focused.

Let’s get down o the details.

– Use compound movements (Squat, DL, Press, Chin, Row, etc)

– 1 or 2 per workout (A1/A2 pairing)

– Ramp up your weights each set, start off with 5’s and work to one heavy set, then add a little more weight for a 3, then finally a little more for 1 single. The triple/single aren’t all out efforts, only the 5, they’re just for extra neural stimulation.

– Take 70% of the top 5 and perform 1 back off set of 10-20 reps unbroken

– Rest is minimal between sets, go as soon as you feel ready

– 3 sessions per week is a good minimum to cover the full body

You will be in and out in no time at all.

This short style of workout will allow heavy enough loads to trigger a host of positive things and the back of set will further potentiate this.

If you find you’re doing all of this in 20min then use the extra 10 for some accessory movements (arms, calves etc).

The protocol above is nothing fancy, it’s devised to get maximum results out of minimum time and as such leaves no room for dilly-dallying.

^^ A sentence many a man has said over the years and continues to say to this day.

“I want to be lean and strong”

^^ Something I’m pleased to announce more women are saying, it seems there has been a shift in them saying ‘I just want to be skinny’ to now learning the benefit of being lean and strong, it’s great to see.

While it is only my opinion, I feel everybody should be strong.

I’m not talking about record breaking strong, just strong enough to stay healthy and stave off the effects of ageing on the body.

These sports all centre around lifting:

– Weightlifting (olympic lifting)

– Body Building

– Powerlifting

– Strongman

– CrossFit (some may not like this one)

Did you know lifting weights can have the following positive effects on the body:

Personally I’d say the mental improvement is the pivotal one as this can have the biggest impact on a persons life in a very positive way.

However….

If you’re not an athlete and lift for health/confidence you should do it because you enjoy it, not because you feel you have to, that’s the secret to balance and long term sustainability.

Don’t eat yourself up if you miss a session, chalk it up to life and sue it as a rest day, that way you’ll be more motivated when you get to go in, excited to train in fact. Keep this in mind and you’ll find you don’t fall out of love with training.

What if lifting isn’t for you?

That’s cool, find soothing you do enjoy, here are some other options for improving strength and all achieving all the other benefits mentioned above:

Bulking, as it’s more commonly known is actually no easy task, adding lean muscle takes time and a willingness to sacrifice those abs of steel for a period of time to allow the correct caloric surplus for your individual needs. Remember being in a surplus is key to building muscle, however you may indeed add some excess ‘fluff’ as well. A tough pill to swallow, but it’s true.

What kind of calorie surplus will you need?

About 500 calories as a guide, some need more, some less. It will take some learning the correct application to get right for you as an individual, but as a general guide +500 each day is a good place to start.

That’s +500 on top of your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure), by the way.

If you have been trying to gain weight for years and been unsuccessful then it’s suggested that you hire a coach to help you. Often the hard thing, from what people say, is the following “I don’t know what to eat”… Food. Food is what you should eat, sadly there is no magic meal plan or supplement that will grant you instant muscle, it doesn’t work that way. You need to get your daily calories right and then the optimal macronutrients as well, here is a nifty link (http://www.iifym.com) to help get you started, although hiring someone would be the best possible option to help with planning, adherence and motivation.

If you are to stop in almost any gym and take a look around you will find lots of people with impressively large Front Delts.

These play one part in creating boulder shoulders but you will find men spend a lot of time focusing on the needlessly, often because of a video they saw on Pumping Iron of Arnold doing a full overhead dumbbell front raise. So with their logic they assume they should do it too, when in reality they have no need.

Why the advice to not train a body part?

Your front delts get enough stimulus from doing bench press, overhead press, incline press, basically any pressing movement you’re doing will get in a sizeable amount of front delt, so will fly’s for that matter.

It’s recommended that the average person will have weak read delts and practically no shape laterally, they neglect the 2 heads of the delt that will give the shoulders the impressive loo they desire.

If you’re one of these guilty people fear not, this simple yet effective 3 day protocol will help you add that much sought after shape & size to your shoulders.